I love reading about the Hurd, and glad to see it being developed. There is nothing wrong with the Linux kernel, but alternatives are always nice.

07-13-2011, 11:02 AM

chris200x9

Am I the only one scratching my head? There more pressing issues such as sata support, usb support and hardware support. Then again I guess you can't turn away someone willing to help simply because their project doesn't coincide with ones priorities.

07-13-2011, 12:56 PM

kraftman

GNU Hurd... Seriously, isn't this dead, yet?

07-13-2011, 01:06 PM

Nobu

Quote:

Originally Posted by kraftman

GNU Hurd... Seriously, isn't this dead, yet?

It was born on my birthday; there's no reason for it to die yet! :cool:

(Edit: well, the year I was born, anyway)

07-13-2011, 01:42 PM

Obscene_CNN

GNU Hurd will never die. A Micro kernel architecture OS is a computer science wet dream. Its based on the premiss code performance is totally a hardware issue and every thing should be broken up into as many tiny modules as possible to make debugging easy. As long as Hurd exists people can continue to get PHDs in computer science with out giving into practical demands of end users. ;)

There is only one really successful micro kernel out there, OS X. I will give props to the developers of it. They have worked hard to get performance acceptable and have actually pulled it off.

07-13-2011, 02:39 PM

le grand fuzzy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Obscene_CNN

GNU Hurd will never die. A Micro kernel architecture OS is a computer science wet dream. Its based on the premiss code performance is totally a hardware issue and every thing should be broken up into as many tiny modules as possible to make debugging easy. As long as Hurd exists people can continue to get PHDs in computer science with out giving into practical demands of end users. ;)

There is only one really successful micro kernel out there, OS X. I will give props to the developers of it. They have worked hard to get performance acceptable and have actually pulled it off.

OS X is a hybrid kernel like Windows NT and the like, not a micro kernel.

07-13-2011, 02:42 PM

drag

Quote:

There is only one really successful micro kernel out there, OS X.

OS X never had, nor never will have, a Microkernel.

Apple was full of shit for even pretending it was ever anything but a monolythic kernel. Even the kernel it is partially was based on, Mach, gave up being a Microkernel before they they stopped developing on it in the early 90's.

If you look it up in Wikipedia they will try to say that Apple's XNU kernel is a 'hybrid microkernel'. However it's no such thing. It's like saying my pickup is a hybrid bicycle because bicycle uses pneumatic tires and my truck uses pneumatic tires.

The only 'mainstream' OS to ever had a Microkernel was NT. Early versions of NT had actual Microkernels, but they abandoned that when they realized it would never have the performance they needed to be competitive. NT kernel currently is certain more of a 'hybrid' then OS X is.

The most successful commercial OS out there to have a real Microkernel is QNX. And it's only useful for embedded systems.

07-13-2011, 10:43 PM

elanthis

Still, hybrid micro-kernels are pretty sweet.

I love how on the (incredibly rare) occasions when my Win7 video driver crashes, my desktop just flickers to black and back and then everything is back to running, no lost apps or anything. Upgrading a driver also requires no restarts. Linux... yeah, Linux. Crashes several times a month if you even think of maybe using your GPU for anything interesting; if even just X goes down all your apps are fu'd; and upgrading anything outside of a text editor usually requires replacing the kernel or half the low-level user-space libraries/daemons and rebooting. Not that you can actually get those updates until ~6 months from now when the distros deign to package up apps' new versions and throw them at you along with that cycle's flavor of desktop UI paradigm. Even though the Linux driver ABI problem and the distro package management problem makes rebooting a near necessity on interesting updates, since interesting updates only happen twice a year nobody notices.

Assuming HURD gets more than a single-digit number of dedicated developers, it at least has the chance of being better designed and better behaving (if not better performing) than Linux for hardcore users. However, I doubt it's ever going to be a project taken seriously by the people who matter (hardware vendors and consumers).

07-14-2011, 10:26 AM

susikala

Quote:

Originally Posted by elanthis

Still, hybrid micro-kernels are pretty sweet.

I love how on the (incredibly rare) occasions when my Win7 video driver crashes, my desktop just flickers to black and back and then everything is back to running, no lost apps or anything. Upgrading a driver also requires no restarts. Linux... yeah, Linux. Crashes several times a month if you even think of maybe using your GPU for anything interesting; if even just X goes down all your apps are fu'd; and upgrading anything outside of a text editor usually requires replacing the kernel or half the low-level user-space libraries/daemons and rebooting. Not that you can actually get those updates until ~6 months from now when the distros deign to package up apps' new versions and throw them at you along with that cycle's flavor of desktop UI paradigm. Even though the Linux driver ABI problem and the distro package management problem makes rebooting a near necessity on interesting updates, since interesting updates only happen twice a year nobody notices.

Assuming HURD gets more than a single-digit number of dedicated developers, it at least has the chance of being better designed and better behaving (if not better performing) than Linux for hardcore users. However, I doubt it's ever going to be a project taken seriously by the people who matter (hardware vendors and consumers).

What are you doing here, only complaining about Linux and praising Win 7? Don't you think there are then other places where you may pass your time more productively? Seriously.

As for HURD, I don't really see its usefulness. It's like Stallman never gave up on the idea he could release an OS entirely under his dream license.